LOVE IN THE TIME OF SERIAL KILLERS is here!!

As of today, Love in the Time of Serial Killers is officially out in the world!

(It has apparently been out several places for a few days already, but not MY local rule-following Barnes & Noble, so today still feels very special.)

As I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter, I kept a notebook dedicated to Love in the Time of Serial Killers while I was drafting it. I first heard of the practice from Lindsay Eagar’s Fast Draft course, and she’d linked to an essay from Alexander Chee about why he started doing it. Mine was a simple black notebook with flowers embossed on the corners of the cover and a Post-It note from my daughter inside that said, “Hi Mom I got this present for you.” I wrote down anything related to Love in the Time of Serial Killers I could think of in this notebook — character descriptions, overly ambitious word count goals, favorite quotes so far, thoughts and questions about where I could go next.

I love that, thanks to this notebook, I can tell you that I wrote the first page of Love in the Time of Serial Killers on August 1, 2020, and that I wrote the last page on October 5, 2020. I can tell you the times when my imposter syndrome was the worst, the lines that zinged with me even while I was writing, the plans I had for trying to get this book out there. Later, I can tell you the things my now-agent said on our first call together, the copyeditor’s notes that made me think “where were you on that one, dipshit” to myself about my own grammar and also the ones I ended up stet-ing (for some reason it was very important to me that it be “donut” and not “doughnut?” I blame The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu.

Anyway, now that the book is done, it’s out, anyone can read it (!!!!! I am chill about this I promise !!!!!), I thought it would be fun to go back and see what I wrote on one of the very first pages in the notebook:

The list is called “FUN THINGS TO INCORPORATE,” which is something I like to start every project with — both as a way to kickstart some ideas but also a touchstone to get back to if I start feeling that “oh no what am I doing” panic that hits around 40k into a manuscript or so.

Half of this list is “lots of serial killer stuff,” including Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Golden State, Judgment Ridge, Forensic Files/Dateline/Disappeared, BTK, Zodiac, murder podcasts/YWA (You’re Wrong About), The Gift of Fear, Dangerous Instincts, and In Cold Blood. I am pleased to announce that *slaps hood of book* this bad boy can fit so many true crime references in it. The only one of these that is NOT in the book is Dangerous Instincts, which I admit with some chagrin I had to look up just now because I didn’t even remember wtf I was talking about. I believe I meant this book? Which I still have not read?

Then there is something REDACTED on the list because it’s a minor spoiler, but suffice to say it’s one of my favorite scenes in the whole book ;)

Next on the list is LIBRARIES, because I fucking love my library and during the pandemic especially, I felt like curbside pickup was saving my actual life. Love in the Time of Serial Killers is such a love letter to the library system.

Then I put “dad’s a hoarder/going through nostalgic stuff” because while I was writing the book, one thing my husband and I were working on was going through all the stuff in our garage, which included LOTS of sentimental papers and random bits of our lives from the last 15 years. I spent an entire month pretty much listening to Hybrid Theory and looking at stuff from high school and I feel like it shows.

(Apparently I also thought Phoebe’s favorite band was The Killers! Which is a fine choice, don’t get me wrong, but I just do not even remember that?! I DID discover Hot Fuss in 2020 aka about 16 years later than everyone else on the planet so that was probably why. Plus, with a name like The Killers . . . you know Phoebe would be down.)

Then there’s “guitar luthier stuff,” “huge Victorian desk,” “‘A Plus Painting’,” and “night swimming (skinning dipping?)” which are all VERY intriguing to me as starting points. “A Plus Painting,” for example, is this one tiny thing later in the book that leads to one little joke between Phoebe and Sam, and here it is as something I was apparently thinking about before I even started to write?!? Feeling like Stephen King when he wrote Cujo here because I just do not even remember half this shit.

ANYWAY consider that the “how it started” part of the meme, and then below is a description of the final story so you can see how it’s going. You can now get Love in the Time of Serial Killers anywhere books are available, including the ebook or audiobook versions, or you can request at your local library!

PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She’s even analyzing the genre in her dissertation — if she can manage to finish writing it. It’s hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn’t had a relationship with for years.

It doesn’t help that she’s low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer. (He may dress business casual by day, but at night he’s clearly up to something.) It’s not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier — a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.

If you’re in the Tampa/St. Pete area, maybe I’ll see you tonight at my book launch event at Tombolo Books! It starts at 7pm and don’t worry, the Rays are playing in New York tonight so we won’t have to worry about that traffic.

I have also been around the podcast scene lately, including Marissa Meyer’s The Happy Writer Podcast where we got to chat about my writing journey and one of our favorite parts of romance novels (with a shout-out to a book by Emma Mills that did it SO well). I was also on Professional Book Nerds chatting with Emma about Paramore (I can never help myself!!), “spicy” scenes, and writing the acknowledgments for a book. I have the teeth for podcasting so I am LIVING MY BEST!

If you subscribe to this newsletter, have reached out to me about my book, posted about my book, if you’re a person in the world who loves books, whatever, I really appreciate it!!! See you around the internet!